Origins RPG Submissions?

Have Wizards of the Coast, Fantasy Flight Games, and Paizo submitted RPG entries for the Origins Awards? If not, why not?

Are they boycotting the Oscars of the gaming community in favor of the Ennies in order to promote their products at GenCon rather than at Origins?

What is the status of their submissions?

I ask, but don't know.

What I do know is that it would be a travesty if none of these companies submitted their excellent products from last year for consideration.

D&D Essentials was remarkable, Deathwatch is great, and Paizo's Advanced Player's Guide is inspiring.

What's going on here?

[Heroes of Karameikos] Part 1 -- Character Generation

I have just finished writing my "working" text for my attempt to create a game that has a "4th Edition Feel Using 1st Edition Rules." So far, I have laid out the initial steps of character creation, which only have a couple of distinct differences from standard Moldvay Basic.

First, characters pick their class before rolling statistics. A player then rolls 4d6, taking the best 3, for their prime requisite and rolls 3d6 in order for the remainder of their statistics. For those classes that have more than 1 prime requisite, they only roll 4d6 for one of the player's choice.

Second, I included my "death" rules. A character that is reduced to 0 hit points is only dead if they are at 0 hit points at the end of an encounter and fail a saving throw versus death. Otherwise they are merely unconscious.

Third, the Dexterity modifier adds/subtracts from damage as well as to hit rolls. This reflects 4e's philosophy of specialization. A philosophy I am trying to move over to my HoK rules.

You can read the full working rules here.

Free PDF of "Kobold Quarterly" #11

I'm convinced that one of the reasons that the online versions of Dragon and Dungeon magazines haven't received as many submissions as they once did is that many people are submitting to Wolfgang Baur's excellent Kobold Quarterly magazine. I've been a subscriber since day one, and have one of those rare Issue 1 print copies.

Wolfgang and crew are currently offering issue #11 for free as a pdf. Just add the issue to your cart and enter the code KQ11Gift at checkout for your free copy -- offer ends February 9th, 2011.

Let's get some more pro-4e and pro-Dragon Age people into the Kobold Community!

Hulu Recommendation Friday -- Community: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons

After a long hiatus, here is the much deserved return of Hulu Recommendation Friday. This week's offering is very near and dear to my heart. I have thoroughly enjoyed the NBC sit com "Community" from its pilot episode, but now that it has fused itself with another of my loves the show has my undying loyalty. If NBC execs try to cancel the show...I'll have them performing Otto's Irresistible Dance.



Gamers...

Note the fusion of new school (Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms) with old school (Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Unearthed Arcana, The Dungeon Master's Guide) in the products featured.

To those of us who saw "Role Models," it's no surprise that Ken Jeong knocks the ball out of the park in this episode.

Adventure Gamebooks as RPGs Part 2 -- Sagard the Barbarian: #1 The Ice Dragon

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game, dove into the adventure gamebook craze in 1985 with his Sagard the Barbarian series of gamebooks. This series of four interactive novels took place in Gary Gygax's signature "World of Greyhawk" campaign setting. Sagard's adventures in The Ice Dragon begin in a mountain range called The Rakers which make up the border of Ratik and the Theocracy of the Pale.

Gygax co-wrote the Sagard series with Flint Dille. Dille's other works have included the Transformers and GI Joe TV series, as well The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay video game. Gygax met Dille while he was in Hollywood working on the Dungeons & Dragons animated series, and his relationship with Dille led to Gygax asking Dille's sister Lorraine Williams to help save a floundering TSR in 1984. The Williams saga is its own story, one which has left Lorraine's name an epithet in some gaming circles. By the end of 1985, the same year that The Ice Dragon was published, Gygax sold his stock in TSR to Williams and ended his relationship with the company.

All of this leaves one to wonder what Gygax thought of Dille and whether the Williams affair is one of the reasons why the Sagard saga is limited to the four existing volumes.

The Ice Dragon is an engaging gamebook, but is its game system sufficient to support game play outside of the game book environment?

Let's have a look at the rules.

Game Mechanics

With the exception of rules for keeping track of "trophies" that Sagard collects during his adventures, The Ice Dragon rules set is entirely limited to combat mechanics. By itself, this doesn't automatically mean that the rules won't be able to be expanded into a complete rpg, combat is a central part of most rpgs, but it does mean that there will be some work for the game master who tries to adapt the system. If the combat system is robust enough, than one could extrapolate from those rules to create mechanics for other actions as well. Games like Dragon Age use the same mechanics for combat resolution and task resolution, so it can be done.

The Ice Dragon's combat mechanics are relatively simple. Characters and opponents are rated for Hit Points which determine how much damage an individual can take before being defeated. These are a common mechanic in D&D descended rpgs. Characters and opponents are also rated by level which represents their skill in combat. Their effectiveness in combat is determined by rolling a 4-sided die and comparing the result to the character's statistic block. An example of a character's statistic block looks something like the following:

SAGARD (LEVEL 2: 1/0, 2/1, 3/1, 4/2)
[20][19][18]...[3][2][1]

This stat block tells us that Sagard is level 2, has twenty hit points, and how much damage he does depending on the roll he makes on a 4-sided die. For example, if Sagard rolled a 3 on the die he would do 1 point of damage. Given that each number has an equal chance of occurring, this gives Sagard a Damage per Round of:

DPR = (.25)(0) + (.25)(1) + (.25)(1) + (.25)(2) = 1

A level two character like Sagard delivers 1 point of damage per round to his opponents, so it would take Sagard approximately 20 rounds to defeat someone as tough as himself. Thankfully, most monsters don't have the same number of hit points as Sagard or game play would be quite time consuming. The full chart for combat effectiveness can be seen in the table below:

Combat Ability		1	2	3	4
Level 0		0	0	0	4
Level 1		0	0	1	1
Level 2		0	1	1	2
Level 3		1	1	2	3
Level 4		1	2	3	3
Level 5		2	3	3	4

Looking at this table, I can see one quick discrepancy. Level 0 characters have the same average DPR as Level 2 characters, and are more effective than Level 1 characters. I understand that the mechanics are attempting to represent Level 0 characters as "unpredictable" and capable of "getting lucky" but the results don't seem quite satisfying.

These mechanics are easy to understand and present a fairly limited combat system. The system doesn't compare the combat abilities of combatants, like Fighting Fantasy, nor does it offer the possibility of maneuvers like Fighting Fantasy does with its "luck" mechanic. The system could be used as a basis for a skill system. Players could receive level ratings in skills. For example, Sagard might have a Level 2 skill in Stealth. This would allow him to roll 1 or 2 "skill success points," on a roll of 2 or better, demonstrating how stealthy the character was. These points could be compared to an opponent's Perception skill. If the opponent generates more skill success points than Sagard, then Sagard fails to hide.

Hmm...I actually like that. In this case, a Sagard stat block might look like the following:

SAGARD
Combat (Level 2: 1/0, 2/1, 3/1, 4/2)
Stealth (Level 2:1/0, 2/1, 3/1, 4/2)
Perception (Level 1: 1/0, 2/0, 3/1, 4/1)

[20][19][18]...[3][2][1]

The Ice Dragon, unlike the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, does provide a simple system for character advancement. As a character wins and loses combats he acquires and loses "experience marks." When Sagard has acquired enough experience marks, he acquires the abilities of the next level. One could easily expand the experience mark system to the skills system by giving 1 mark per successful use of the skill, or even failures if the attempted use was creative enough.

As you can see, the system in The Ice Dragon taken by itself doesn't provide a full game system, but that it can fairly easily be expanded to create one. Were I to use the "Sagard System" as the basis for a game though, one of the first things I would change is the use of the 4-sided die for resolution determination. There isn't enough variety in it and when comparing the different levels it allows for a Level 0 individual to be as good as a Level 2 character on average.

[Heroes of Karameikos] 4e Feel, 1e Rules -- It's George Strayton's Fault

I have been haunting the blogs of various members of the Old School Renaissance gaming community for some time now. Some of the ideas coming from that community are quite inspiring to the role playing game fan and I heartily recommend that you hunt down several of the many blogs devoted to the OSR movement. Start over at Grognardia as he has a wonderful collection of links to OSR sights and is a consistently good blogger on topics gaming and pulp related. Up until yesterday my interest in OSR gaming has been primarily as a consumer. I own the "Swords and Wizardry White Box," "Lamentations of the Flame Princess," and the "B/X Companion" in print and several other titles as pdfs, and have enjoyed reading them. Reading the works of these creators created a small spark in the back of my imagination, but that spark had no kindling to feed it into a flame.

That kindling came from reading George Strayton's excellent "Legends & Labyrinths" blog. Unlike many OSR gamers, and I'm not sure George would consider himself completely OSR, Strayton's blog wasn't devoted to using the OGL to create a re-envisioned version of the D&D of old with "old school mechanics." Those blogs often, though not always, have a certain disdain for 4th edition D&D in general and a special ire for D&D Essentials. Strayton's blog was a sharp contrast to the typical older edition nostalgia blog. His blog was dedicated to playing 1st edition style games where death is around every corner and adventurers aren't necessarily "heroic" using the 4th edition D&D rules set. His particular recommendation was to use Essentials as the basis, and his house rules as a modification to that core rules set. Most of his house rules are excellent and are finding their way into my regular 4e game.

He also inspired me to try to get my group to play Moldvay/Cook Basic D&D again. The group's session wasn't quite what I had hoped it would be. I measure the quality of a game session by how much fun the players have in a session, and one player felt particularly hopeless during the very first encounter. It wasn't a good start, and I blogged about that yesterday, but it did turn out fun for me as the adventure continued -- and I hope the group enjoyed it as well. The experience made me realize what I really like about M/C Basic and what I really like about 4e.

I love the archetype driven nature of M/C and its quick and easy mechanics, but I don't like its almost capricious lethality. Characters can die at a moments notice. While this is fine for a horror game, I don't like that in a High Fantasy game. My favorite D&D setting, Mystara, can in no way be considered anything other than High Fantasy and a capricious lethality seems out of character for the setting.

What I enjoy about 4e is the clarity of the rules set, how the actions of one player interact with the other characters in the game. The rules reward and encourage team play. The game also allows players to feel heroic, while still feeling at peril during combat. I have considered using Robin Laws' mark up system in Hamlet's Hit Points to highlight how 4e combats nicely follow plot beats, but others have already touched on the topic. What I don't like about 4e is the tremendous number of powers, feats, and magic items. Yes, they allow for creativity, but they also create so many combinations that a player can become lost examining the puzzle pieces and never get around to actually playing the game.

I've decided to take my love for these two systems and post my own modified rules set temporarily called Heroes of Karameikos. The house rules will be based on the Moldvay/Cook rules sets, but they will incorporate some of what I like from 4e. In a twist on the traditional "old school" line "New edition rules, old edition feel," my game rules will be "Old edition rules with a new edition feel." I'll try to post at least one Heroes of Karameikos update a week starting with character generation and moving on to each of the classes. For those of you wondering...

Yes Elf will be a Class!

Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale Looks Like a Good Time

I am eagerly awaiting Atari's Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale which will be released for the Xbox 360 and PS3 later this year. If it is as fun as prior D&D console offerings, it should be a nice way to waste a few hours.